Convenience continues to be a predominant trend in today's society. With answering machines, voice mail and other messaging services becoming increasingly common, many callers find it frustrating to receive no answer. This situation arises when a caller attempts to reach a party that does not have an answering machine, voice mail or any other messaging service. Accordingly, there is a need for a message delivery service that enables a caller to benefit from the convenience of being able to leave a message even when the called party does not have a system automatically answering their phone. However, such a service should allow for called parties who insist on not receiving telephonic messages, to block the service, preventing messages from being delivered to their extension(s).
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/239,232, filed Jan. 29, 1999 and commonly assigned with the present application, is incorporated herein by reference. The incorporated application discloses an improved message delivery service that records a caller's message for subsequent delivery to a called party. The service includes, among other things, a blocking mechanism that can be configured at the request of the called party to prevent activation of the message delivery service. This feature is advantageous in that it provides subscribers the option of not receiving incoming calls from an automated message delivery system.
According to one embodiment of the incorporated application, an advanced intelligent network (AIN) is configured to provide a selectively-enableable messaging service for delivering caller information to a called party subsequent to an originating call. The messaging service is capable of collecting and recording the caller information during the originating call and then placing one or more calls to the called party at successive intervals to deliver the caller information. A blocking mechanism permits the called party to disable the messaging service so that it is not made available to the caller during the originating call.
Some communication systems include end office (EO) type switches in place of or in addition to AIN network elements. In such systems, the method and apparatus of the incorporated application cannot be properly implemented. In the AIN implementation, a query message is sent to a service control point (SCP) for terminating blocking status. This query occurs prior to the service being offered to the caller. When an end office type switch is present, there is no AIN trigger on the originating call. As a result, the system can not determine if the called telephone number has requested blocking of name and number delivery.